His Excellency, the Most Reverend Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (b. 1934, also known by his lay name, Timothy Ware) is a titular metropolitan of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Great Britain. From 1966-2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford University, and has authored numerous books and articles pertaining to the Orthodox Christian faith.

Life

Born Timothy Ware in Bath, Somerset, England, Metropolitan Kallistos was educated at Westminster School (to which he had won a scholarship) and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a Double First in Classics as well as reading Theology. In 1958, at the age of 24, he embraced the Orthodox Christian faith (having been raised Anglican), traveling subsequently throughout Greece, spending a great deal of time at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Patmos. He also frequented other major centers of Orthodoxy such as Jerusalem and Mount Athos. In 1966, he was ordained to the priesthood and was tonsured as a monk, receiving the name Kallistos, in honour of St. Kallistos Xanthopoulos.[note 1]

In the same year, he became a lecturer at Oxford, teaching Eastern Orthodox Studies, a position which he held for 35 years until his retirement. In 1979, he was appointed to a Fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford, and in 1982, he was consecrated to the episcopacy as a titular bishop with the title Bishop of Diokleia, appointed to serve as the assistant to the bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate's Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. Despite his elevation, Kallistos remained in Oxford and carried on his duties both as the parish priest of the Oxford Greek Orthodox community and as a lecturer at the University.

Since his retirement in 2001, Kallistos has continued to publish and to give lectures on Orthodox Christianity, traveling widely. Until recently, he was the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. He is the chairman of the group Friends of Orthodoxy on Iona. He serves on the advisory board of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

On March 30, 2007, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate elevated the Diocese of Diokleia to Metropolis and Bishop Kallistos to Titular Metropolitan of Diokleia.

Publications

Metr. Kallistos is perhaps best known as the author of the book The Orthodox Church, published when he was a layman in 1963 and subsequently revised several times. More recently, he produced a companion volume, The Orthodox Way. But his most substantial publications have emerged from his translation work. Together with G. E. Palmer and Philip Sherrard), he has undertaken to translate the Philokalia (four volumes of five published to date); and with Mother Mary he produced English translations of the Lenten Triodion and Festal Menaion.

“The Fifth Earl of Guilford (1766-1827) and His Secret Conversion to the Orthodox Church ,” in D. Baker (ed.), The Orthodox Churches and the West, Studies in Church History, 13 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1976), 247-56.

“Mount Athos Today,” Christian, 3.4 (1976), 322-33.

“ ‘Separated from All and United to All’: The Hermit Life in the Christian East,” in A. M. Allchin (ed.), Solitude and Communion, Fairacres Publications, 66 (Oxford: Fairacres Publications, 1977), 30-47.

“The Holy Spirit in the Personal Life of the Christian,” in Unity in the Spirit – Diversity in the Churches, The Report of the Conference of European Churches, Assembly VIII, 18th-25th October, 1979, Crete (Geneva: WCC, 1980), 139-69.

“Unity and Mission,” in Unity and Mission, The Report of the Eleventh General Assembly of Syndesmos, (Kuopio: Syndesmos, 1984), 5-15.

“The Sanctity and Glory of the Mother of God: Orthodox Approaches,” The Way, Supplement 51, Papers of the 1984 International Congress of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1984), 79-96.

[Also printed in Alberic Stacpoole (ed.), Mary in Doctrine and Devotion: Papers of the Liverpool Congress of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dublin: The Columba Press, 1990), 34-41.]

“Eastern Christendom,” in John McManners (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 122-61.

“The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy for the Byzantine Worshipper,” in Rosemary Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium, Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986 (Birmingham: Center for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 1990), 7-28.

“The Tension Between the ‘Already’ and ‘Not Yet,’ “ in Colin Davey (ed.), Returning Pilgrims. Insights from British and Irish participants in the Fifth World Faith and Order Conference Santiago de Compostela 3-14 August 1993 (London: Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, 1994), 29-33.

“The Understanding of Salvation in the Orthodox Tradition,” in Rienk Lannoy (ed.), For Us and Our Salvation, IIMO Research Publication 40 (Utrecht-Leiden, 1994), 107-31.

[Reprinted separately with the title How are we Saved? The Understanding of Salvation in the Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis Mn: Light and Life, 1996), 19 pp.]

“A Sense of Wonder,” in Dan Cohn-Sherbok (ed.), Tradition and Unity: Sermons Published in Honour of Robert Runcie (London: Bellew Publishing, 1991), 79-83.

“ ‘Go Joyfully’: The Mystery of Death and Resurrection,” in Dan-Cohn-Sherbok and Christopher Lewis (edd.), Beyond Death: Theological Reflections on Life after Death (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995), 27-41.